The semiconductor industry has had tremendous success in delivering ever more cost effective chips to market through the use of scaling. However, while scaling works well in device or front-end semiconductor processing, device wiring is not amenable to scaling and results in degraded interconnect resistance and/or capacitance. To alleviate this problem, the industry has been migrating to the use of a lower resistance conductor, such as copper (Cu), and is also introducing lower-k (k=dielectric constant) insulators to reduce capacitance in damascene interconnect structures. Newly developed insulators in the ultra-low-k (ULK) range (k<2.5) are generally characterized by a great deal of porosity (e.g., 30-50%). These materials are extremely fragile and difficult to integrate since they are susceptible to contamination from other sources.
In a dual-damascene (DD) structure, a single metal deposition step is used to simultaneously form Cu metal lines and vias. The Cu metal lines and vias are formed by filling recessed features, such as a trench, a via, or other interconnect structure, in a dielectric film or substrate. After filling, the excess Cu metal that is deposited outside the recessed feature is removed by a chemical-mechanical polishing (CMP) process, thereby forming a planar structure with metal interconnect inlays.